Heartbreaking moment chronically ill mother watches her teenager throw home-cooked meal down the drain on Channel 4’s Batch From Scratch
This is the heartbreaking moment a mother admitted she was ‘devastated’ after her three teenagers refused to eat any of the meals she cooked.
On last night’s episode of Batch From Scratch on Channel 4, Joe Swash and Suzanne Mulholland met the Brooks family from Falkirk in central Scotland.
The family’s meal planning was in dire straits, with mum Erin often struggling to cook for her husband Ally and three children Ava, 19, Ivy, 16 and Marshall, 15, due to her chronic illness.
Senior family support co-ordinator Erin, who has Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) – a chronic fatigue syndrome that affects her daily life – was determined to pack as many vegetables into the family’s meals as possible, but at the expense of seasoning and flavour.
On nights she was unable to cook and after finishing his long shifts as a forklift driver, her husband Ally resorted to unhealthy convenience options and frozen meals, which were all nutritionally defunct.
Heartbreaking footage shown in the programme saw 16-year-old Ivy feeding the meals to the dog, and throwing another down the sink.
Erin and Ally revealed the children had even come up with nicknames for Erin’s cooking, including ‘disaster pasta’, ‘swamp soup’, ‘barf Bolognese’ and ‘rotten risotto’.
The light-hearted jibes had clearly taken their toll on Erin, who was worried her kids wouldn’t come back after eventually leaving home.
Erin Brooks from Falkirk in Scotland was struggling to make her kids healthy meals they actually wanted to eat
Speaking to the camera, she said: ‘When I went to the bother of finding something that I think the kids will like or it’s really healthy and nutritious, prepped it, cooked it and they don’t like it, it’s upsetting, it can be devastating.
‘It hurts because that’s what I should be doing, I’m their mum. I worry they won’t come back.’
The footage also showed Erin’s attempt at making a chocolate mousse from butternut squash and refusing to add salt and pepper in her main dishes.
When asked about her dinner the previous night, Ivy confessed: ‘It wasn’t disgusting, it just had no flavour’, while the others said ‘please no’ when they were offered it.
As a result, the kids were turning to Ally’s ‘quick fix’ food, and snacked on cereal.
Watching from home, viewers were perplexed that the rest of the family weren’t helping Erin more, especially given her illness and her children being in their late teens.
They wrote: ‘So this woman’s nearly leaving home kids are not cooking for their unwell mum or themselves’;
‘It was awful to see how upset the mum was at the start of the show, when all her children hated her food, but clearly didn’t want to try and help her improve it. At the end of the show, it was so lovely to see how happy she looked!’;
Footage shown in the programmed showed that the kids were throwing Erin’s meals down the sink. Pictured Ivy, 16
Erin was trying to incorporate hidden vegetables into their diet. Pictured making a pasta sauce
Marshall, 15, was also unimpressed with Erin’s cooking and enjoyed Ally’s ready meals instead
‘I’ve just been watching that #BatchFromScratch on ch4 with my bf, and we are both fuming at how horrible the family were to the mum!’;
‘Still no cooking from the kids then’;
‘From the age of 13, my mum taught me to cook, clean and iron my own clothes. But these three are “growing up” and yet they don’t know how to cook. That should be the focus of this episode. If Erin has a flare up and Ali is stuck at work, will they just starve?!’;
‘The mum is trying too hard to be extremely healthy with nasty food which is just having the opposite effect because the kids then turn to junk, but their is a happy medium, it doesn’t have to be a million different veg in a meal.’
Describing how living with ME affects her daily life after her diagnosis 10 years ago, Erin explained: ‘It’s almost like having the flu and it can come on like a switch.
‘If I get stressed, if I get overwhelmed, if I stand too much or sit in the same position too long, I get really sore and it makes it very limiting. Having a flare-up and standing and cooking dinner is very difficult.’
With a weekly food budget of £179.38 – nearly 20 per cent of which went on fast food the family had ended up ‘double spending’ between Erin’s healthy dinners and Ally’s quick takeaways.
Watching from home, viewers were perplexed that the rest of the family weren’t helping Erin more, especially given her illness and her children being in their late teens
Their food habits meant the family was either eating really healthily or consuming rubbish
The family were completing eight supermarket shops on average a week, only balanced diet a third of the time.
Erin said: ‘It makes me panic, They’re not getting enough nutrition. I feel guilty, it’s disheartening.’
Luckily Joe and Suzanne were on hand to help, firstly sorting out the freezer, and visiting Lidl, which sponsors the programe.
‘Batch lady’ Suzanne then showed them that healthy meals didn’t have to be bland, prepping a veg-packed pasta sauce, sausage and egg muffins and a homecooked family steak pie.
Together with Joe, she made soup bags from leftover veg ‘free soup’ and used ageing fruit by making a smoothie – and they concocted a 28-day meal plan.
By the end of the programme, the family were well on the way to a healthier lifestyle.
Joe even revealed they’d be saving £3,178 if they stuck to the plan for a year, and would save 495 hours of cooking.
Even the children were impressed with the meals, with Ivy admitting, It’s just actually nice’ – and the others inviting their friends over.
Luckily hosts Joe Swash and Suzanne Mulholland (pictured) were on hand to help
Erin said: ‘It’s reduced so much stress, I feel so much more organised.’
The show aims to help families fund a healthier lifestyle through the benefits of batch cooking.
Suzanne, who hails from Selkirk, Edinburgh, is known as ‘The Batch Lady’ to her 339,000 Instagram followers, and frequently shares videos of her batch cooking from her farmhouse.
The mother-of-two cooks meals including chilli, fajitas, spaghetti bolognese, meatballs and burgers from the frozen foods she buys from the supermarket, which she says is convenient and keeps the costs down.
She saves time by using similar ingredients and just one spoon to save on washing up.
The meals are then distributed into bags which are flattened to save space in the freezer.
The super mum cooks meals including chilli, fajitas, spaghetti bolognese, meatballs and burgers from the frozen foods she buys from the supermarket, which she says is convenient and keeps the costs down.
She saves time by using similar ingredients and just one spoon to save on washing up.
The meals are then distributed into bags which are flattened to save space in the freezer.
In a 2019 interview with FEMAIL, she said: ‘Working mums and dads want a home-cooked meal but there’s little time to cook during the week.’
Channel 4’s Batch From Scratch: Cooking For Less airs Mondays at 8pm.
